A no-hands-tied war
Jordan, Patrick
rapidly reduced to their prewar numbers. Enforceable agreements on reducing the levels of offensive weaponry are vital in a region torn by conflict. Here the UN Security Council can have a...
...It is incarnational, a faith grounded in personhood, in the body and the blood...
...Here the UN Security Council can have a major role in restraining those permanent members, the U.S., the Soviet Union, France, and China, whose weapon sales have contributed so lavishly to the carnage...
...Pacifism is a legitimate position, but it doesn't leave much room for discussion...
...yet it is clear that as long as the Palestinians have no permanent home and the Israelis no formal recognition by their neighbors, their multiple grievances will provide endless opportunities for conflict...
...They will not forget the deadly cost of our smart bombs and surgical strikes...
...About this, Israel perforce will have the final say, but the United States should not step back and wait...
...When events--such as the Ash Wednesday shelter/bunker bombing in Baghdad---or CNN updates have intruded, thereby threatening to raise questions about the war's conduct or progress, the government has worked assiduously to contain the damage...
...If need be, this war will be prosecuted with the full extent of American power...
...Faith in God is one answer, true...
...Necessary goals...
...In Iraq, over half the population is below the age of fifteen...
...I am not saying the argument is over or dissent inadmissible...
...Sinai...
...And like it or not, our Scriptures teach that in his own actions, Jesus chose self-suffering rather than recourse to force...
...It forswears the use of nothing: gas, germs, nuclear weapons...
...No price is too heavy to pay to reverse the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait...
...The political and psychological implications are immense, and, for some, reassuring...
...For example, reconciling massive nuclear retaliation with notions of proportionality is a contortionist's trick, not a philosopher's achievement...
...The Israelis have never been so vulnerable--and felt so---as over the past seven weeks...
...When that changes, I'll change...
...The conduct of the war has rendered the initial UN terms of engagement null...
...As in the question of nuclear deterrence, just-war claims seem to leave a good deal of practical reality (or practical madness) out of the equation...
...GBU27s are two-thousand-pound bombs which are able to penetrate more than six feet of reinforced concrete...
...But we are likely to forget tomorrow...
...Indeed, while we must demand a limited war, I think there is something carping and unconvincing about secondguessing every military decision...
...The only constraint--are you listening, bishops?--is not morality but public opinion...
...Eye has not yet seen nor ear heard the full extent of the devastation...
...Surely a renunciation of such indiscriminate slaughter is the only response consistent with just-war conditions...
...Yet his blood freed them, as it did his torturers...
...Finally, there will be no real chance for long-term peace in the Middle East unless the Palestinian issue is resolved...
...It is time for the United States to call in its chips with Israel and help resolve this unending source of conflict...
...But as in the Agincourt battle scene in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, once begun, everything becomes mud, confusion, and blood...
...The Iraqi despoliation of Kuwait, its firing at Saudi and Israeli cities, and its fouling of the Gulf's waters have been mirrored by the coalition's bombardment of Iraqi cities, the contamination of water and sewer lines, and the destruction of hospitals, schools, bridges, trucks...
...Moreover, do we have the right to insist that our neighbors share the risk of powerlessness our moral conviction requires...
...Ours is not a religion of abstractions, even if it finds Aristotelian, Augustinian, or Thomistic distinctions useful...
...Only high-ranking officers and defense department officials release news on this war, it seems, presenting their information in sanitized video packages and with abstract terminology (killed is "KIA," war is "storm...
...The United States and Egypt should press their Arab coalition partners to meet with Israel and begin a process that will lead to the recognition of Israel, to a guarantee of its borders and security, and to an end of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza...
...The Scud missile attacks have confirmed to them and finally made clear to the rest of the world the exceedingly short warning time they have to respond to air attack...
...The Israeli-Palestinian conflict should not be linked to the Iraqi-Ku.waiti one...
...But renouncing the use of nuclear weapons leaves one rather at the mercy of less scrupulous opponents...
...For many, one suspects, the just war theory was simply employed as a no war theory...
...As Mr...
...While U.S...
...By any reasonable interpretation, the war has met--to the degree any prior evaluation can--the criteria of just cause, proper authority, last resort, likely outcome, and proportional means...
...I'm not so sure it's such an infallible document...
...Billed as a war to liberate Kuwait, the purpose of the Gulf war has devolved to the ouster of Saddam Hussein and the crushing of Iraq's military capability...
...In sum, this is the Bush policy on proportionality...
...And it may be the last opportunity for the Palestinians to assure themselves a territory...
...9 Waged without restraints...
...I don't think so...
...It was especially ironic for churches to condemn U.S...
...Critics of U.S...
...As such, it is neither just nor right...
...But we are also cautioned against testing God's benevolence...
...And as in Vietnam, the American public prob148: Commonweal ably never will learn of it all...
...No wonder the Psalmist prayed that he be delivered from his unknown sins...
...Perhaps the greatest danger to peace over the long term is our own national predilection for settling the world's problems unilaterally and militarily...
...Anyone who believes otherwise is naive...
...There was, without doubt,justification for this war...
...THE GULF WAR l.IMl'm OF THE/Ub'T WAH EASIER SAID THAN DONE judge the war against Iraq to be ill-advised and irnprudent, but not as some suggest either unjust or immoral...
...Just as our abiding prosperity blinds us to dire poverty and despair in our own cities, our seeming immunity from violence encourages a dangerous sense of invulnerabilty and moral triumphalism in our foreign adventures...
...He refused the sword, even to protect his followers--who were initially scattered...
...It was also very much in their self-interest, and it is to this selfinterest that appeal should now be made...
...They demanded we not rush to war, but after five months during which Iraq pillaged Kuwait and prepared to protect its gains they continued to cling to the infinite regression implicit in any "last" resort contingency...
...Some people who argue the inviolability of individual conscience on questions of birth control and personal morality seize upon the just-war theory as though it were handed down on Mt...
...That rules out nuclear deterrence, for there can be no deterrence without the projection of a credible threat--namely a willingness to do the unthinkable...
...We will never be shown their suffering in depth, nor have we experienced a similar devastation in our lives and families...
...We will not have one hand tied behind our backs like last time...
...That is the challenge of peace making...
...I am not even saying President George Bush is right--I think he's wrong...
...frees us, as it does our enemies...
...Perhaps there has never been a better chance for Israel to resolve the Palestinian question than now...
...If today the United States can claim less and less economic muscle, we have proved without a doubt that we can still make war...
...Thus, we as a people are likely to repeat our folly...
...As Lent is meant to remind us, our faith is concemed with redemption and repentance, never with self-justification...
...According to eyewitness accounts, the GBU-27s "cut through the building like butter...
...casualties have been minimal, the scenes we have yet to see from Iran and Kuwait should rein in our hubris...
...These words are not written to in any way to justify appeasement or to acquiesce in the arrogance of aggressors...
...Indeed, questions of nuclear war offer only tragic or absurd alternatives and utterly 8 March 1991:149...
...As authorized by the UN, it was intended to liberate Kuwait and to restrain a tyrant...
...intervention demanded UN approval and a congressional declaration, and when they got both seemed to dismiss such authority as ultimately irrelevant...
...And to govern and direct that, all information on the war has been skillfully tailored to maintain public support at home...
...For as it happens, this is not simply a war about forcing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait...
...Perhaps to provide some of the latter with a more human touch, last month Dick Cheney and Colin Powell autographed a pair of GBU-27 bombs while at a Stealth fighter bomber base in Saudi Arabia...
...command...
...THE GULF WAR A NO-HAHDS-TIED WAR NEITHER JUST NOR RIGHT ~ " - ~ espite all the talk about this being a just war--never has a president inclined his head so often to the moralists--the Gulf war is really nothing less than war the old-fashioned way...
...It is being waged without real or final restraints, and it is being carried by its own momentum...
...We have made waste of Iraq to save Kuwait...
...that we come out of it with rewards richer than the liberation of Kuwait...
...Bush told a convention of religious broadcasters last month, defending this war as just: "When this war is over, the U.S., its credibility and its reliability restored, will have a leadership role in helping to bring peace to the rest of the Middle East...
...With little loss of American blood (held to "acceptable levels"), we can strike almost anywhere in the world, massively and convincingly...
...There are further ironies...
...This will be no Vietnam...
...But they imply that in our impatience--in our abandonment of effective, sustainable, and proportionate sanctions--we made a fundamental error, an error that will have geopolitical and moral ramifications for generations to come...
...regaining its sense of self-confidence...
...And the overriding concern has become only that we win, convincingly...
...The logistical accomplishments in the Gulf mobilization were unprecedented, and the technical achievements rivaled those of any war-making undertaking in history...
...policy out of hand just as Congress completed an all but unprecedented moral debate over the use of force...
...PATRICK JORDAN Patrick Jordan is the managing editor of Commonweal...
...that the war not end with anyone anywhere questioning America's resolve in the immediate future...
...I am saying it is implausible at this point for those in opposition to the war to employ the rhetoric of righteousness...
...Noble goals...
...We have yet to understand the significance of it all...
...We have it on the president's word...
...Over three hundred people died...
...Their restraint in the face of such attacks was admirable...
...It is a war about oil, about Western hegemony in the "new world order," about establishing the preeminence and staggering power of technological weaponry, and, at bottom, about a weakened U.S...
...Quite the contrary...
...We cannot continue on these paths...
...The lesson of the Gulf war is now indeed clear: America has been preparing for war for a generation and we can do the job...
...Several days after the signing party, Stealth bombers from the same base attacked the bunker/shelter in Baghdad...
...If anything, the debate over warin the Persian Gulf has illuminated some of the theory's inadequacies...
...9 Carried by its own momentum...
...At this time, I see no evidence of moral illiteracy in the U.S...
Vol. 118 • March 1991 • No. 5
